


♡i hear the birds on the summer breeze♡

by Lo Turner-Kane (doujinbag)



Category: Lana Del Rey (Musician), Marina & the Diamonds, Music RPF
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Bulimia, Cutting, Drug Use, Eating Disorders, F/F, Self-Harm, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Underage Drinking, basically trying to fix each other but they simply cant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 09:33:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3564755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doujinbag/pseuds/Lo%20Turner-Kane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carmen loves Electra’s soft hair, her sugar-pink lips, and the drawn-on heart directly underneath her left eye. Electra loves Carmen’s singing voice, likes an old-time jazz singer mixed with a hip hop artist.<br/>They both love tragedies just a little too much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	♡i hear the birds on the summer breeze♡

**Author's Note:**

> Read the tags carefully for trigger warnings.  
> I've been meaning to write this for ages but I finally did at school today :'D yyyaaaayyy

They meet in the bathroom of a club that a certain bottle blonde is too young to be in. There’s white powder on the sink seemingly cut up by a plastic ID– fake, not to mention– and the girl standing with her head in the sink basin also has her fingers down her throat, forcing a concoction of vodka and cake up and out of her stomach.

“Oh, honey,” someone says behind her, making her raise her head and break into a cold sweat. “What are you doing in a place like this?”

They make eye contact through the reflection of the mirror and Electra– underage partier, fake ID owner, cocaine user, undiagnosed bulimic _Electra–_ holds her breath. The other girl can’t be too much older than her, although she actually looks and sounds to be of legal age. The look she’s currently receiving from the taller redhead confuses the hell out of her; her eyes are filled with all the concern of a mother but her lips are pressed together in a silent smirk.

“Why does it matter to you?” Electra asks at last, fingers scattering over the powdery drug on the sink.

“Because you look just like I did when I was whatever your real age is,” the other replies with a sigh in her voice. Before Electra can stop her, she’s picking up the ID on the sink, brushing away loose traces of cocaine from the edge of it. “Anya H. Wood,” she reads aloud. “Twenty-one years old?” Her eyes scan over the blonde and she raises an eyebrow. “Now, I wouldn’t believe that even if I was blind.”

“Please give that back,” Electra says, reaching out to grab the card back but failing. “I need it.” Her throat is sore from vomiting so much but she simply tries to ignore it.

“Need it for what? Anya, honey– and yes, I _know_ that’s not your real name– you shouldn’t be here. You should be home, watching TV with your friends. What are you really? Sixteen, seventeen?”

“Sixteen,” Electra mumbles.

“This place is no place for a sixteen year old girl. At all. Why don’t you go home, yeah?”

“What if I said I don’t have a home?”

“Well,” the redhead says slowly, “if that’s the case, I’ll drive you to mine.”

“How can I trust you?”

“Darling, if you spend your time in this disaster of a place taking cocaine from shady men, I’m pretty sure you can trust anyone.”

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Well, to be fair, I don’t know yours either, Miss _Anya H. Wood.”_

A defeated sigh. “Electra.”

A gentle smile. “Carmen.”

♡♡♡

Their favorite thing to laugh at is how smashing their names together, they get Carmen Electra, a celebrity Carmen supposedly despises.

“She’s awful.”

“She’s _pretty.”_

“If that’s your idea of beauty, no wonder you’re so fucked,” Carmen rolls her eyes.

It’s a joke and Electra knows it, but she reaches for the vodka bottle anyways.

“No,” Carmen says, holding out her hand. “You don’t need it.” She puts the alcohol up for the sixth night in a row and that’s the end of that.

♡♡♡

Sleeping on Carmen’s couch isn’t so bad, Electra thinks, but it could be better. She just hates the lack of another body next to hers whenever she wakes up in the morning.

They’re eating chocolate donuts and bacon for breakfast one morning when Carmen finally asks, “Why aren’t you in school?”

“Dropped out,” Electra replies shortly, stuffing more food in her mouth.

“What happened to your family?”

“Ran away from my mom’s house. Dad kicked me out after staying there only a week.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Electra downs her glass of milk and sighs. “What about you?”

“I’m twenty-three, I don’t need to live with my parents.”

“Well, duh, I know that,” Electra says, “but tell me about them anyways.”

“They sent me away when I was seventeen due to my little ongoing alcohol problem at the time,” Carmen says bluntly. “I haven’t spoken to them since.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

They decide to stay away from the topic of family.

♡♡♡

“You know,” Electra says one day as they sit on the couch watching some obnoxious soap opera, “I’m a fake.”

“A fake?” Carmen repeats. “How so?”

“Because I fooled even myself into believing I only loved boys,” she says nonchalantly. “But that’s not true at all.”

“Oh?” Carmen brushes her red hair from her eyes. “Does this have something to do with–“

“It’s nothing,” Electra says quickly. “Just saying.”

“Thank you for confiding in me, then.”

“Yeah.” They both direct their attention back to the TV and Electra fights yet another urge to kiss the older girl.

♡♡♡

“Carmen, what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” Electra has been staying in this small house of Carmen’s for nearly two months now, meaning Carmen is used to her randomly timed questions. She currently has her hands submerged in the dishwater, holding a sponge to a plate when Electra asks her question. It’s a considerably touchy subject, yes, but Carmen doesn’t mind it, not really.

“To myself or to someone else?” Carmen asks.

“Someone else.”

“Hm… well, before my parents sent me away, my boyfriend at the time and I stole a police cruiser and he let me drive. I was drunk. Crashed into a tree and he died.” She doesn’t show any sign of hurting in her voice, but Electra feels bad anyways.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“Can I ask another question?”

“Of course.”

“What about something you’ve done to yourself?”

Carmen hesitates this time, but not for her own sake. “I tried to kill myself when I was eighteen.”

Electra doesn’t say anything, and for a second, Carmen is worried she shouldn’t have said anything. “Electra?”

Electra leaves the room with her blonde hair flowing behind her before she can cry in front of Carmen.

♡♡♡

Electra’s sitting on Carmen’s bathroom floor carving bloody hearts and pentagrams into her arm with a razor blade on the night of Valentine’s Day. February crept up on her far too fast and now the day is here, taunting her lonely heart. With bubblegum wrappers scattered around her and her old ID torn to shreds in the sink, she’s doing probably everything she _could_ be doing except for crying. She hasn’t shed a single tear this whole time.

A single drop of blood makes its way off her arm and onto the floor. Soon, another falls right beside it, then another, and yet another until she’s surrounded by a tiny pool of blood. She finally sets the blade down on the closed toilet seat and sighs as she squeezes the top of her arm, digging her manicured nails into her skin unforgivingly to will away the sting of the bleeding.

“Electra! Are you here?” Carmen calls from the living room. Electra is far too lost in the numbing bliss of physical pain to register any sound at all. “Electra! Hello?” Footsteps approach the bathroom door and Electra’s heart stops beating only for a second as the bathroom door swings open. “Elect–“

Carmen cuts herself off mid-word as her eyes land on Electra– panicking, bleeding, internally screaming Electra. Carmen steps over the bubblegum wrappers and overlooks the plastic shards of false identification in the sink as she makes her way to Electra on the floor, slumped against the wall with guilt in her eyes. Although Carmen wants to cry and scream and ask what the hell possessed Electra to do this to herself, she stays calm. She brushes Electra’s bangs out of her eyes with gentle fingers and quietly says, “Electra?”

Electra’s eyes open slowly and she brings herself to stare Carmen in the eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. She apologizes incessantly for the next two hours, even long after Carmen bandages her arm and holds her close in her bed.

♡♡♡

Electra’s arm is full of scars now, but she doesn’t bother hiding them. On lazy days, Carmen will pull Electra into her room to watch the TV in there, absentmindedly stroking her fingers over Electra’s scars and toying with her bleached hair that’s growing back in brown. This particular Saturday is another lazy day, Electra’s head resting calmly on Carmen’s chest as it slowly rises and falls with each breath she takes.

“Electra,” Carmen says at last, “why did you cut yourself last week?”

“It was Valentine’s Day,” Electra mumbles.

“You don’t like love?”

“Don’t be fucking ridiculous,” Electra scoffs. “I crave love. I hate remembering I’m alone.”

“You’re not alone,” Carmen says quietly. “I’m here.”

“That’s different.” Electra props herself up on her elbow and stares at Carmen. Carmen is beautiful, Carmen is flawless, Carmen is everything Electra’s always wanted to be and more.

Electra loves Carmen.

Carmen’s eyes flicker down to Electra’s arm, but only for a short moment. Soon enough, she’s staring at Electra’s lips, feeling so very wrong for what she’s about to do but she simply can’t bring herself to _care_ anymore.

Carmen’s hand holds Electra’s scarred arm more carefully than she’s ever done anything in her life as she leans up and captures Electra’s lips with her own, a gasp from the blonde caught between their mouths. Electra places her hands on Carmen’s chest ever so gently and her long eyelashes flutter before she gives in and closes her eyes. At last, Carmen pulls away from the kiss and looks at Electra with that same concerned expression.

“Okay?” she asks, running her thumb over Electra’s plump lips. The blonde nods, producing a smile from Carmen’s mouth. They kiss again and don’t stop until long after the sun sets.

♡♡♡

Carmen talks about someday going to California and seeing the palm trees on the clean, sunny beaches. She’ll bring Electra the day she goes, she says. Electra smiles, knowing she’d like that quite a lot. Lord knows she needs a break from this suburban hell.

♡♡♡

“I lied to you,” Electra says one day. “I mean, not really. But sorta.”

Carmen raises her eyebrow and sets down her fork on her dessert plate, leaving her cake alone for the time being. “About what, exactly?” she questions warily.

“Nothing major,” Electra shrugs. “It’s just that my name isn’t really my name. Well, it is, but… not?” She laughs nervously and scratches at her hollow collarbones with the handle of her fork. “Ellie Hart. Hart spelled without an ‘e’. I call myself Electra Heart because I prefer it. So it’s not really a lie. But yeah. Now you know.”

Carmen just smiles and resumes eating her cake. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Mhm.” Electra picks at her cake and stares at it, praying it might burst into flames if she stares long enough. She made it herself, she should eat it, _Carmen’s_ eating, so why can’t she?

“I’m gonna head to bed early. I’m tired,” she says, swiftly disposing of her cake in the trash and disappearing into their room before Carmen can even say “goodnight”.

♡♡♡

Carmen loves Electra’s soft hair, her sugar-pink lips, and the drawn-on heart directly underneath her left eye, but perhaps what she loves most on her body are the purple lovemarks she leaves herself, trailing down Electra’s neck and feathering out over her collarbones. (There may or may not be more than a few on the blonde girl’s inner thighs, too, but Carmen can only admire those right as she’s about to make new ones.)

Electra loves Carmen’s singing voice, likes an old-time jazz singer mixed with a hip hop artist. “A gangster-style Nancy Sinatra”, Carmen calls herself. Electra agrees wholeheartedly. Carmen’s voice is much deeper than her own from years of underage drinking and smoking. It makes Electra wonder if her voice will ever get like that.

Carmen’s not religious. As a young girl, her parents dragged her to the church where she learned Jesus died for her sins and the Holy Father chose a young virgin to mother the Christ-child, but Carmen always preferred praising sin and stealing money out of the offering bowls. Her sacrilegious behavior got her into trouble with more than just her Holy Father in Heaven above.

Every time Carmen comes, she cries out ten “Hail Mary”s and clutches onto her rosary beads for dear life. Electra’s name is her only prayer.

Electra is a bit more complicated. She burns up Bibles in her free time, cursing God for the life she has. There’s only two problems with this: Electra doesn’t actually believe in the God she yells at, and she knows she only has the life she does due to decisions all made by herself. Then again, if she’d never made such decisions, she wouldn’t have Carmen, so she chooses to believe there’s a good thing in every tragedy.

♡♡♡

Electra Heart herself is a tragedy, and she can’t even seem to find anything good within herself. Electra Heart is glitter-stained vomit in the bathtub, a secretly renewed fake ID, stolen shots of tequila when no one’s looking, and blonde hair dye that she wishes would simply burn all her hair off. Electra Heart is a made-up ego created by a young girl far too unhappy with reality. Electra Heart is the product of an accidental cocaine addiction and a dying wish for the ability to find love.

Electra Heart isn’t at all what anyone hoped she would be.

Meanwhile, Ellie Hart– the mastermind behind her own alternate self– is a runaway, a bastard child, a girl who lost her virginity at the age of thirteen on a dare. Ellie Hart stopped believing in love long ago, so she dreamt up Electra to fill that void for herself.

She never expected Electra to stay around so long.

♡♡♡

Electra doesn’t let Carmen kiss her thighs anymore. She doesn’t wear shorts in the spring and her mini skirts require black leggings underneath them. She doesn’t want anyone to see her newfound scars, but especially Carmen.

Carmen can never know half the things that run through Electra’s mind on a day-to-day basis. However, despite Electra’s pained wishing, Carmen comes across Electra’s journal one day anyways. She’s merely scanning it with her eyes, Carmen tells herself. It was already open to the newest page, she’s not _really_ snooping.

 _March 31_  
I want the world to go away. I wish I’d just stayed with Mom and listened like a good daughter should. I wish I wasn’t so fucking suicidal. I wish Carmen didn’t worry so damn much about me.  
I wish I was dead.

Carmen steps away in horror and tries not to show it when she sits next to Electra again. Electra’s fine, just like she always says she is. She’s fine.

She’s fine.

♡♡♡

As the days pass by, Electra begins to withdraw from Carmen more and more. Carmen’s worried Electra doesn’t love her anymore.

Then again, that’s ridiculous. They’ve never even said “I love you” yet.

Once again, Electra shies away from Carmen’s attempted kisses. She doesn’t eat dinner and she only eats a spoonful of ice cream. She nearly disappears into their room for yet another early sleep before she hears Carmen blurt out, “I love you.”

Electra: Gulps down the lump in her throat. Forces a smile. Picks at her scars under her jeans with her über-sharp fingernails. “I love you too.”

Carmen: Breaks into a smile. Lets out a nervous laugh. Gets up and kisses Electra’s cheek right under her drawn-on heart. “Let me come to bed with you.”

Electra: Hesitates. “Okay.”

♡♡♡

Their story began on page 6063 of Electra’s life. Now, it ends on the last.

Carmen comes home late one night, scared of the dead silence lingering around the house. What if Electra’s gone and cut herself again? Threw up too much and passed out? Carmen’s stomach is churning just at the thought.

She breathes a sigh of relief when she sees Electra sound asleep under the covers. She has a full face of makeup on, but Carmen doesn’t question it. Leave it to Electra Heart to take the term “beauty sleep” so literally.

Carmen changes into her nightgown and slips under the covers next to her sleeping girlfriend, but something’s off. In fact, a _lot_ of things are off.

Electra is dressed in an elegant flowing gown, one that Carmen would deem red carpet-worthy, not sleepwear. There’s a folded-up piece of paper lying on her unmoving chest. Her entire body is _cold as ice._

Carmen doesn’t fucking want to check her pulse. Her hands trembles as she unfolds Electra’s note and she holds her breath.

 _Carmen-_  
I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you. Thank you for all you’ve done. I wouldn’t have survived these past few months without you. I never intended for you to fall in love with me and I’m so, so sorry you did.  
Electra Heart is dead. I had to kill her, it was the end. These things simply cannot last forever.  
Stay beautiful.  
Forever yours,  
Electra/Ellie

Carmen sobs as she holds Electra’s lifeless body, groaning in agony at the lack of a heartbeat. Electra is gone. Electra, who kept Carmen smiling all this time, who was her only reason to never fall back into her dreaded alcohol-dependent habits.

Electra Heart is dead.

♡♡♡

Carmen stands in the heart of San Francisco, red sunglasses in the shape of two fat hearts settling across her face. She’s made it to California just like she’s always dreamed of and needless to say, she’s in love with the west coast. The warm wind blows her hair back behind herself, making her feel free as she stretches her arms outward.

She’s standing directly on the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge and she knows exactly what she’s doing. It’s been exactly six months since the death of Electra, and Carmen simply cannot go on. She smiles up at the sky and laughs– she laughs _loud._

“Looks like I’m finally here, babe,” she calls out. “Man, you’d love it here. It’s so fucking warm. Better than that shit we dealt with in New York, really.”

It takes one final step and Carmen is falling, falling, _falling_ before she meets the water below with a harsh crash.

♡♡♡

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://spookymileskane.tumblr.com) / [instagram](http://instagr.am/and.a.smile)


End file.
